Behavioral targeting of advertising and content is increasingly common online. By analyzing search terms in a session, documenting content types visited, or employing other approaches, sites try to deliver material that fits interests they believe they can deduce from online behavior.

But do you browse like a boy or a girl? A cute little application analyzes your browser history and guesses your gender.

Give it a try. It seems like harmless fun, and it does open a door into the realm of behavioral targeting, revealing a bit about accuracy and privacy.

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

Discussion

3 Thoughts on "Dude Looks Like a Lady?"

The cute test got my gender wrong. I think it may have done a better job if instead of looking at the top ten most visited sites, it went into the Long Tail of my surfing. In my top ten are everybody’s common sites (Google, Netflix, NY Times), but when you get into the sites less travelled, the skew would be to macho (yes, kidding) sites for technology and business like Slashdot and ReadWriteWeb.

Very interesting! More than 1/3 of the sites I visited were travel related (expedia, southwest, united airlines, budget, etc.). I hadn’t realized that travel related sites were more frequently visited by women than men.

They gave me up!

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